Keep ex-city manager from suing the city he defrauded: Opinion

Is it really worth putting another state law on the books just to head off one greedy, shameless former public “servant”?

Well, yeah, in the case of Vernon’s litigious ex-city manager, it is.

Bruce Malkenhorst is the retired city manager of Vernon who is suing the city to regain the portion of his once-outrageous pension that CalPERS slashed after he was convicted of misappropriating public funds.

As we noted in a July editorial, it takes real chutzpah to sue the city you’ve admitted to defrauding. But Malkenhorst has no shame, and is suing Vernon to try to get the $430,000 a year that the California Public Employees Retirement System cut from his pension. You read that figure right: Malkenhorst’s original pension was $545,000 a year, but CalPERS reduced it to $115,000 — still too much, in our book, for someone who scammed the public he was supposed to serve — because there was not sufficient documentation to support his final Vernon salary of $911,000 in 2005.

So state Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, who represents Vernon, convinced the Legislature to pass his Senate Bill 39, which would prohibit any “local public officer” convicted of a felony for actions taken in office from suing his former employer over the amount of his pension. Instead, the convicted officer would have to take up the matter through administrative channels with CalPERS.

The urgency bill would apply to any claim still pending as of Jan. 1, 2014, or filed after that date. It could apply to former Bell officials as well.

It’s not without qualms that we recommend the governor should sign this legislation, because it’s a gut-and-amend bill — and in general we hate gut-and-amend bills. (When it was introduced back in December, SB 39 was called the “Clean Energy Employment and Student Advancement Act of 2013.”) But this is not the usual gut-and-amend procedure that is aimed at currying favor with a lobbyist or slipping something past the public at the last minute.

This bill falls into the only category we can think of that’s a legitimate reason to pull out the content of a bill and replace it with entirely unrelated content: It’s a situation that arose after the deadline for introducing bills and it’s an urgent matter that should not wait until next year.

Cities should not have to spend public money on legal fees to defend themselves against convicts who defrauded them. Gov. Jerry Brown should sign SB 39.